Betsy Lerner > Quotes

“I had officially joined the cacophony of sick mother fuckers.”
― Betsy Lerner, Food and Loathing: A Life Measured Out in Calories

“I hadn't been able to trust since the age of four. I was torn between wanting to be cradled and telling the world to go fuck itself, and those were opposite sides of the same coin.”
― Betsy Lerner, Food and Loathing: A Life Measured Out in Calories

“Nothing was a more powerful compass of my mood or a better indication of my self-worth than the number on the scale.”
― Betsy Lerner, Food and Loathing: A Life Measured Out in Calories

“When an editor works with an author, she cannot help seeing into the medicine cabinet of his soul. All the terrible emotions, the desire for vindications, the paranoia, and the projection are bottled in there, along with all the excesses of envy, desire for revenge, all the hypochondriacal responses, rituals, defenses, and the twin obsessions with sex and money. It other words, the stuff of great books.”
― Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees

“[I]t's the child writer who has figured out, early on, that writing is about saving your soul.”
― Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees

“Just remember that this relationship is based on mutual trust and respect, so never reveal your true self.”
― Betsy Lerner

“The world doesn't fully make sense until the writer has secured his version of it on the page. And the act of writing is strangely more lifelike than life.”
― Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees

“...but every person who does serious time with a keyboard is attempting to translate his version of the world into words so that he might be understood.”
― Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees

“It was a miracle to me, this transformation of my acorns into an oak.”
― Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees

“But editors are still the world's readers. And thus the eyes of the world.”
― Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees

“But I also believe there is enormous value in the piece of writing that goes no further than the one person for whom it was intended, that no combination of written words is more eloquent than those exchanged in letters between lovers or friends, or along the pale blue lines of private diaries, where people take communion with themselves.”
― Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change. The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference. I still didn't know the difference.”
― Betsy Lerner, Food and Loathing: A Life Measured Out in Calories

“No matter how many compromises were made along the way, no matter what happens in the future, a book is a thing to behold.”
― Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees

“Chances are you have a deep connection to books because at some point you discovered that they were the one truly safe place to discover and explore feelings that are banished from the dinner table, the cocktail party, the golf foursome, the bridge game. Because the writers who mattered to you have dared to say I am a sick man. And because within the world of books there is no censure.”
― Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers

“For most writers, reading is also a very intense experience; they don’t read so much as compete. The writer measure’s himself against every text he encounters, imagining he could do it better or wishing he had thought of it first. The natural writer would almost always rather be reading, writing, or alone, except of course when he needs to come up for air (that is, for subject matter, food, sex, love, attention). He may be a selfish son of a bitch, he may seem to care more about his work than about the people in his life, he may be a social misfit, a freak, or a smooth operator, but every person who does serious time with a keyboard is attempting to translate his version of the world into words so that he might be understood. Indeed, the great paradox of the writer’s life is how much time he spends alone trying to connect with other people.”
― Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees

“For the writer who truly loves language, a trip to the copy editor is like a week at a spa. You come out looking younger, trimmer, and standing straighter.”
― Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees

“But in my experience, a writer gravitates toward a certain form or genre because, like a well-made jacket, it suits him.”
― Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees

“All writers are like bomb-throwers, whether they attack with dense academic prose or jazzy riffs of stream-of-consciousness writing.”
― Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers

“Beware of all writers who substitute initials for their give names -”
― Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees

“There is nothing more refreshing for an editor than to meet a writer or read a query that takes him completely by surprise”
― Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees

“It’s hard to separate the person from the illness.”
― Betsy Lerner, Shred Sisters

“How did you get to be so good?” It was a compliment that felt like an accusation.”
― Betsy Lerner, Shred Sisters

“Throughout Ollie’s high school years, my mother’s mantra was “This too shall pass.” But this transgression was permanent, Ollie’s badge of honor for all to see. It was her way of marking herself as separate from us, her first step toward being free. The words etched into her skin came from a New Hampshire license plate: “Live free or die.”
― Betsy Lerner, Shred Sisters

“Happiness is attainable, sadness is inevitable.”
― Betsy Lerner, Shred Sisters

“There is a necessary gestation period during which a writer should protect his work, because the minute he sends it out, or joins a writing group, or enrolls in an MFA program, he engages the part of himself that is focused on the result more than the work. For”
― Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers

“What I want to know it whether we're supposed to change or just accept who we are?”
― Betsy Lerner

“I’d withdraw or go blank rather than show my feelings, and people assumed I either had no emotions or was snobbish. A girl in my dorm once asked if I thought I was better than everyone else.”
― Betsy Lerner, Shred Sisters

“There comes a time when you have to let go of the New Yorker fantasy in service of justing getting on with it [writing].”
― Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees

“Some people don’t have the knack for being alone” is how she put it. “They’re not strong the way we are.” I never viewed my ability to be alone as a strength. It was more of a default. My mother would never admit that she had had a breakdown in slow motion after the divorce. The few times I suggested she talk to a therapist, she said she’d had enough of therapists and psychiatrists for a lifetime. Mom had chosen the unexamined life and stuck with it to her dying day.”
― Betsy Lerner, Shred Sisters

“As little kids, we’d race between the rooms; in all of our games, Ollie always cast herself in the dominant role. Only later was I struck by how sadistic it all was: me in the role of Curious George, Ollie as the Man in the Yellow Hat trapping me under the hamper and sitting on it as I wailed to be set free.”
― Betsy Lerner, Shred Sisters